Swiggy cheats users, restaurants and investors, claims online post

Update: In response, Swiggy has said that the anonymous post is targeted at maligning its reputation and the article carries inaccurate facts. You can read the complete official statement below:

" The recent blog post from an anonymous source is targeted at maligning the reputation of Swiggy as an organization. The article carries inaccurate facts regarding business and order numbers. It not only references employee departures from a year and a half back, but also presents details on our partners out of context and with mischievous intent. Swiggy has grown over the last few years on the back of strong support from our restaurant partners, employees, delivery executives, consumers and investors. Our restaurant partners are at the heart of our success – our joint vision of providing a complete food ordering and delivery solution from the best neighbourhood restaurants inspire us. Our employees are the keepers of our soul – as a start-up organization, we take pride in the culture of mutual respect and common purpose that has helped us grow thus far. We are committed to winning together with all our stakeholders who we have always engaged with, in complete transparency and integrity."

When it comes to the food tech startup space in India, one prominent name comes to the mind - Swiggy. Four people claiming to be associated with Swiggy (two current employees who plan to quit in next two weeks and two ex-employees) have penned an anonymous post, narrating the alleged harrowing experiences at the startup. 

The post claims that the startup has fudged numbers to woo investors. The blogpost by these employees details how their core job is to signup restaurants and lie about the marketshare, volumes. "This largely includes signing contracts that we know we are going to go back and renegotiate every few months. That is highly stressful, it eats into our conscience, and takes away a little piece of us every time we are made to do this," the post reads.

Image source

According to the post, some restaurants are paying more than their net margins as Swiggy becomes a significant portion of revenues in some places of Hyderabad and Bangalore. "At first it was 5%, then 10% and now nearly 25%. The management wants us to take this to an average of 30% in the future," the post says. 

Swiggy is also said to be 'intentionally routing' its users to order from Bowl Company, its own private kitched, instead of increasing the partners' businesses, the post claims.  The Bowl Company is the top search result in all of Koramangala, it further explains. 

It also talks about user reviews - how bad reviews are pulled out and the good ones are usually paid for. 

Talking about lies to investors, the post reads, "Our January 2017 order volumes were less than December 2016 volumes. Yes, we had a decline of order volumes in January. But we have seen the investor presentations, and they have shaved off the December numbers in the slides in order to show a linear growth curve across all months of our existence."

Annoyed with the senior management over the alleged poor behaviour with the staff and delivery boys, the startup is being termed as a house of cards that could come down crashing. 

"Just a few days ago our access to the order volume tracking dashboards was revoked for everyone, and the next thing is that we read an article that says we have crossed 4 million orders a month," the post reads. The blogpost explains that the startup doesn't deserve any award and the numbers claiming 4 million orders in a prominent newspaper have been fudged. The actual numbers are less than 3 million orders for the month of June, 2.76 million to be precise, as per the report. 

"I think because Swiggy is built to sell. The management team, under influence, has often told our colleagues in various late-night parties that they don’t want to do this forever, and they are building this to make a quick buck. A lot of the senior management knows this and is aligned to this mission. Leading to mistreatment of employees, partners (restaurant owners), and delivery personnel," the post concludes. 

We reached out to Swiggy, but the startup refused to comment and said an official statement will be released soon. We wonder what Swiggy, that has become a renowned name in food tech industry, has to say about this. 

You can read the complete post here. 

• Swiggy
• Swiggy users
• Swiggy investors
• Swiggy cheats
• Swiggy restaurants
• Swiggy Tumblr post
• Swiggy ec-employees
• Swiggy employees